


A Few Shots of Gin

by TheRealEvanSG



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossposted on Spacebattles, Meeting Death, No character bashing, Not-Love-Sick Ginny, Reincarnation, SI, Sassy Ginny, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRealEvanSG/pseuds/TheRealEvanSG
Summary: Of all the things that Evan expected to happen to him after he died, reincarnating certainly was not at the top of his list. Reincarnating into the world of one of his favorite childhood book series definitely wasn't. And reincarnating into the main character's love interest?Well, at this point, there's nothing he can really do but roll with it.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 102





	1. Gin, Gimminy, Gin, Gimminy, Gin-Gin-Giree

“So, what do you think the most embarrassing way to die would be?”  
  
My coworkers and I had the strangest conversations during the downtime of our work. We bounced around from topic to topic like my mother bought unnecessary amounts of shoes. Half an hour ago, we’d been talking about funny face mask designs. Now we had somehow strayed into the realm of morbidity, apparently. Sitting behind the cash register on a red cigarette tote crate, I glanced up at Sasha with a raised eyebrow.  
  
Sasha, the red polo Circle K made us wear looking surprisingly good against her chocolate skin shade, shrugged at me, unabashed. “What?” she chirped, smiling like she had been talking about the weather. Her teeth were white and clean, in comparison to mine, which had seen better days. Since no one was in the store, we’d taken our masks off for a while. “It’s a normal thing to ask.” She pushed a stray dreadlock back behind her ear, chuckling.  
  
“It’s definitely not normal,” I sniped back, shaking my head and rolling my blue eyes to the heavens. They caught a glimpse of a lock of brown hair that lay oddly on my forehead. “But, whatever. Uhh… let’s see. Embarrassing ways to die… Getting stabbed by a toddler?”  
  
Sasha stared at me. Hopefully it wasn’t at the blackheads that seemed to always crop up on my nose; I’d always been uniquely self-conscious about them. Then she snorted and shook her head, amused. “Yeah, I’ll admit, that’s a good one.” She raised a finger, pink-painted nail flashing into view momentarily. “Here’s another good one, though. Choking on a grape.”  
  
I nearly spat out the Arizona Half-and-Half I’d grabbed off the counter and took a sip of, choking in surprised laughter. “A _grape_?” My eyebrows hiked up. “Sasha, that’s just _sad_ if you choke to death on a _grape._ ”  
  
Sasha just grinned back, winking. “Name of the game.”  
  
Taking a moment to catch my breath, I rolled my eyes and smirked. “Alright, alright, let me think,” I hummed, cracking my knuckles. Then I drummed my fingers against my knee. “What about…” I paused, considering. “Slipping on a banana peel?”  
  
“How do you die from—?” she began to protest, brows furrowing. Then she shook her head. “You know what, no. Not gonna ask. I’m sure where there’s a will, there’s a way. And God knows people in this country are stupid enough to find a way to do that, somehow. Literally drinking Bleach to kill a virus, _holy shit_ …” My coworker rubbed the back of her head after that. Then, when a moment passed, she said, “A heart attack due to a surprise birthday party.”  
  
“…Now that’s just depressing.”  
  
“Shit, yeah.”  
  
Sasha and I sat silent for a few minutes, thinking.  
  
I was a 21-year-old college student attending for a degree in geology. I loved science and found it vastly intriguing. I worked there at Circle K for my part time job since coming back to Ohio from Brazil on Foreign Exchange a couple years ago. It didn’t pay well, but I didn’t need _too_ much extra since I was staying with my mom at our house (my parents were getting divorced, so Dad no longer stayed with us, and my older sister lived with her boyfriend in Georgia). I had about average height—that being 5’10”—and a fairly normal body structure. I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t underweight, either. Unfortunately, since I didn’t work out, I didn’t have a six-pack or anything like that.  
  
“Evan, thought of a different one,” she said with a shit-eating grin. “Having a piano fall on you.”  
  
I choked. I tried to hold back my grin, but it wouldn’t let me. Soon I had burst out into peals of laughter, setting my Arizona Half-and-Half back on the counter and bending over to clutch at my sides. “Oh, God. Tom and Jerry, really?” I shook my head, very amused, and smirked back at her. Then a thought struck me. “Ah, I heard once that the owner of the Segway company died by driving his Segway off a cliff.”  
  
Now it was Sasha’s turn to descend into a fit of snickers. “Wow, not good company rep,” she quipped, causing me to only laugh harder at that.  
  
Yep, Sasha and I were definitely horrible people.  
  
The sensor in front of the door chimed as said door opened and let in a short girl one year older than Sasha and I, though she looked like she was still a high school senior. She had golden hair and creamy skin, deep hazel eyes, an adorable button nose, and a cute, heart-shaped face. Her silky, smooth hair had been tied into a ponytail today; she wore a different hairstyle every few days or so.  
  
“Hey guys,” she said blearily, holding back a yawn. “You two wanna cover my night shift, right?”  
  
Sasha blanched. “No thank you,” she intoned with all the horror of someone asked to spend 24 hours in the world’s most haunted mansion.  
  
I didn’t react quite so over-the-top, but I _did_ stick my tongue out. “Sorry, Mary, no can do.”  
  
“Awww.” Her lips curled in the cutest little frown, and she let out a huff. “Dammit. Alright, I’ll be back in a moment.” She took off her signature rust-brown hoodie that she wore and draped it over the two-foot wall between the area behind the counter and the rest of the store. Then she swept off to the office in order to clock in.  
  
Sasha’s eyes trailed on her as she disappeared into the office.  
  
“ _Damn_ , she’s hot,” Sasha said with a pout.  
  
Chuckling, I elbowed her. “When are you gonna ask her out, huh?”  
  
“Just because _I’m_ bi as hell doesn’t mean she is.” She playfully shoved me in return. “Go do your end-of-shift stuff and get the hell outta here already.”  
  
“Alright, alright,” I said with a fond roll of my eyes. Shaking my head in amusement at her, I did just what she said. After I’d closed up my side and was just logging out of the cash register, Mary returned, name tag around her neck.  
  
“You good?” she said, and I nodded, laying my clipboard with all of the information regarding the amounts of cash and coins and things on the counter.  
  
Yawning, stretching, and cracking my back, I grabbed my tea/lemonade and took a sip as I walked back to the office to grab the lottery scanner gun. I signed into it, returned to behind the registers, and started scanning all of the scratch-off tickets. Once that was done, I went back to the office, uploaded my lottery scan to the system, clocked out, and dropped my face mask in the trash as I left the store.  
  
“Good night, Sasha, Mary,” I called to them as I opened the door and stepped outside.  
  
Their response came as the glass doors to the gas station swung shut. “Good night, Evan.”  
  
Freedom at last!  
  
I walked down the streets of town, enjoying the feeling of the cooler night air brushing across my skin. My mom’s apartment was only a couple blocks away. Why waste gas driving when I could instead walk? I hummed contentedly, sipping tea. As I passed by one apartment building, a three-story brick building with a black shingle roof nestled between a few other places on the street that had an interesting history of being used to hide runaway slaves, I noticed a furniture moving truck parked alongside it with the back open. Two guys sat chatting with each other against the building’s wall. I raised my brows as I saw a couple other workers hefting a piano up into one of the second-floor apartments. I hummed some more as I watched. Wow, that piano was really ornate… whoever bought it must have had a lot of money on their hands.  
  
I blinked as I heard the sound of a large snap, and froze, wondering what that was.  
  
Right before my eyes, the cord lifting the piano broke and the piano hung in free fall for a moment, before dropping like a ton of bricks. _Oh, shit!_ My body panicked, and despite the fact that I’d frozen before I could be in a spot that could potentially put me in danger of getting crushed, I leaped aside, wincing as my body fell on hard pavement. My momentum carried me into the road, and the movers shouted in concern; my body suddenly got drenched in headlights, and I looked up to see a truck melting out of the night. The driver stared at me with wide, horrified eyes.  
  
Four hands grabbed at me and heaved me onto the sidewalk. The truck swerved, narrowly avoiding running over my leg that still hung out onto the street. He blared his horn at me as he sped by. My heart thud-thudded in my chest.  
  
“Hey, hey, you alright?” a deep, worried voice asked me, and I looked up to see the two movers who had been slacking off. They’d been the ones to save me, and I hurriedly picked myself off the sidewalk to clasp my hand with theirs, shaking both of theirs in succession.  
  
“Thank you so much, I almost died,” I gulped, breath dry. _Holy shit_. I hadn’t even had time to see my life flash before my eyes. The near encounter with death had me completely shaken up, and despite already being one of the whitest guys you could possibly know, my face paled. “If it wasn’t for you—”  
  
The other worker, shorter than his buddy, shook his squarish head. “We saw what happened. Don’t thank us. If it hadn’t been for that piano falling, you wouldn’t have almost been run over in the first place.”  
  
“No, but really, thanks,” I insisted. My heart raced a hundred miles an hour. I’d nearly died _twice_ right there! What the fuck was with tonight!? After profusely thanking them some more, because seriously, they’d saved _my life_ , I left. Sadly, my Arizona had rolled out onto the road and gotten completely smashed underneath the truck’s tire, so I no longer had any tea to drink. But hey, it was a very small price to pay for remaining alive.  
  
The rest of my trip home proved uneventful, and I arrived at my apartment building seven minutes later, considerably calmer.  
  
The building was another brick three-story. My town was really old, and brick buildings were commonplace. The street was mostly empty, though shop lights remained on—at least, the ones for the shops that had returned to their regular, non-covid hours. I did see a couple people on the sidewalk a building next to my apartment building. The lights in my apartment were out, though.  
  
Huh. That was weird. _Mom’s never gone to bed before I get home..._ I paused, trying to think about why that could be, then I facepalmed. Shit, that’s right. She had to work late today because one of her coworkers called off.  
  
I pushed the door open to our apartment and stepped a foot inside. I began to bring my other foot inside, but I heard a cry of pain from my right. After the night I’d just had, I wasn’t about to take any chances. I reached into my pocket and carefully withdrew the pocketknife I kept, just in case. It was a cool little thing I’d bought in Colorado as a kid during a vacation to Yellowstone (my grandparents used to have a motorhome that they used to take my sister and I around to various National Parks). Then I backpedaled and glanced over towards the people I’d seen near my apartment.  
  
A man holding a purse rushed past me. Behind him, a woman nursing a red mark on her face propped herself up off of the sidewalk. “He stole my purse!” she cried, pointing at the man.  
  
My eyes widened, and maybe against my better judgement, I immediately rushed at him, pointing my knife at him. “Hey, stop, thief!” I cried, and his head whirled around. His hand dug into his pocket—  
  
_Shit, shit! What if he has a gun!?_  
  
I quickly threw my knife, and it buried itself in his leg. He cried out in pain, falling to the street, and I jumped on him, trying to pin him down—  
  
_Crack! Crack!_  
  
The world stood still for a few moments.  
  
I noticed several things in that practically-stopped time. First, the thief had managed to withdraw a loaded gun. Second, his finger sat, trembling, on the trigger. Third, when I rose my hand up to my chest and then lifted it up to my face, it was covered in blood.  
  
_Oh._  
  
My body slackened, and I slumped forward, collapsing atop my murderer.  
  
I was dead. My vision dimmed, the concerned cries of the woman who had been robbed faded away, and I couldn’t move my body.  
  
My eyes fluttered shut as warmth—an unwelcome and horrible warmth—spread throughout my body. It started in two spots in my chest, pervading the rest of my being. Pain followed; terrible, horrible agony like I'd never experienced.  
  
Then I knew nothing. Felt nothing.  
  
_Was_ nothing.  
  
Or at least, until I saw the unnaturally tall figure shrouded in a dark cloak, bony hands just visible past the creepy folds of its sleeves. It towered over me, loomed, and had an extraordinary gravitational pull. It reminded me of a black hole, sucking in everything in its path. No escape. I couldn't see its face; beneath its hood was a meaningless, empty void.  
  
A swallow rolled down my throat and my skin crawled.  
  
"Who are you?" I croaked, hands rooted at my sides. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, _If I'm experiencing this, I must be still alive. My brain's still working. I'm not clinically dead yet. This is a hallucination my brain's coming up with in its dying trauma._  
  
I'd been an atheist for three years and, despite the gamut of reincarnation self-insertion fics I'd written and read, had zero belief in any kind of afterlife. You lived; you died. That was it.  
  
I had hope now.  
  
"You," the strange, otherworldly figure uttered, "have not done enough." Its voice sent chills down my spine. It was cracked and dry from overuse, and akin to bones crunching underneath some giant foot.  
  
Confusion swept over me. I'd _heard_ it. And not like the kind of fake hearing in dreams; I'd _actually_ heard it—the bass, the slight baritone. The odd accent like none on the planet. My skin crawled even more. What did _that_ mean!? I licked my lips, which suddenly had as little moisture as the cloaked figure's voice. "What do you mean, I haven't done enough!?"  
  
The figure studied me for a moment more. "You have lived a life of stagnation. You have remained idle. Unable to move on to either Paradise or Torment… I am not sure what to do with you."  
  
Still in disbelief, I rose my eyebrow. "So what, you're supposed to be Death or some shit? Man, my brain conjures up the weirdest things… Listen here, 'Death.'" I folded my arms across my chest. "I don't need heaven or hell. I'm fine with living one full life, and dying and staying dead. But since I haven't done any of that, I'm gonna need this hallucination to end so I can wake up in the hospital and end my family's worrying over me."  
  
Not-Death seemed surprised by this. I could hear the way its pitch raised a little. "Truly? If I were to tell you that, this moment, I could send you to eternal Paradise, you would reject it?"  
  
"I would," I said without hesitation. "Eternal life would get boring after a while. Besides, I'm not perfect. How could I deserve to live eternally in everlasting happiness while others suffer?"  
  
"...Hm…" it murmured, thinking. "I see. I can sense the honesty in your words." It was silent a few moments more, then suddenly its bony hand shot out and grasped the top of my head. My eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Just like how I could _hear_ its voice, I legitimately _felt_ those fingers. They sent frosty waves into me. "You cannot, unfortunately, live out the rest of your life as you were… however, there is still one thing I can do to meet your wishes."  
  
Pain seared in me, and I'm pretty sure I heard someone screaming like a banshee.  
  
Then, quite suddenly, the strange between-world was gone.  
  
In fact, my sight was gone, too. I couldn't see anything, and I could only feel an odd, tight space, liquid surrounding me.  
  
I could barely make out distant, muffled voices—"Push, Molly! Push!"  
  
The fuck?  
  


~o~

  
Here's something reincarnation stories tend to gloss over, either because their authors just find it more convenient for their protagonists to immediately know who their parents are, or outright have no idea about it—newborn babies have _terrible_ vision. I'm talking absolute _shit_ tier eyesight. My eyes REFUSED to see anything that wasn't immediately before them properly, and it was frustrating as _all hell._  
  
At least my ears worked well enough to hear what must have been the doctors call my father "Arthur" and my mother "Molly." And to hear the voice of what sounded oddly like Mark Williams coo:  
  
"Welcome to the world, Ginevra Weasley. Aren't you so beautiful?"  
  
Huh, Ginevra Weasley… That sounds like one of the characters from my favorite book series. Despite being as problematic as it is (the definitely-not-Jewish goblins and the totally-enjoying-slavery house elves among the top of the problematic list) and despite having an even _more_ problematic author, I still loved the series to death. It really helped shape my love for fantasy and adventure novels. And I distinctly remembered that one of the more central side characters was named Ginny Weasley.  
  
Assuming, for _just_ a moment, that this wasn’t all some weird brain trauma-induced hallucination and I’d just been— _shudder_ —reborn as someone else, presumably a girl this time, my parents must be big fans of the books.  
  
...Wait a minute, what were their names again? Arthur? Molly?  
  
Hold the phones.  
  
Hold the _motherfucking_ phones.  
  
Those… Those were _also_ the names of the Weasley family patriarch and matriarch respectively. That… huh. Either I’d been ‘reborn’ to some _really_ devoted fans, or... Or I was in the world of Harry Potter.


	2. This Magic Moment

I’ll admit; for the first week or two of my new life, I didn’t do much. I kept expecting to wake up in a hospital bed. Also, I was a baby. That in and of itself restricted what I could do rather heavily. I couldn’t even walk; the best I could manage was an awkward crawl. My vision got gradually better, but that didn’t help much. The biggest points of interest were my new mother and father taking me to Diagon Alley (not that I could see it) to show me off to some of their friends there, and telling me stories about the Wizarding World. However, they felt constantly on-edge. And if I had things down correctly, that was probably because it was the end of August and the War was still raging.

I shuddered. The only thing worse than Neo-Nazis trying to start a race war: _magical_ Neo-Nazis trying to start a race war, and having already succeeded in doing so. Utterly sickening.

If there was one thing I hated more than anything else, it was bigotry.

During my past life, I hadn’t exactly been the target of bigotry, but I grew up in rural Ohio. It proved difficult to avoid people being sexist or racist and especially homophobic in that kind of area, and I’m shamed to admit that though I didn’t, for the most part, take stock in most of these beliefs, I still held a few of them. And I still laughed at overtly bigoted jokes. I still held some really disgusting views.

I grew out of that by the time I graduated high school, thank God, but that remained an undeniable part of my past.

So, I _hated_ the fact that Muggleborns and Half-Blooded wizards were treated so horribly by Pure-Blooded ones. And, for what reason? Pride? Screw pride, human decency is _way_ more important!

All that said, the majority of the first two weeks consisted me doing things like mulling this over.

When I woke up on the first day of my third week as Baby Ginny, I decided that there could be no way I could possibly have a dream or hallucination as detailed and extended as this proved to be, and at last accepted the reality of the situation. Against all conceivable logic—against everything I thought I understood about how the human brain, and memory, and personality worked—I had somehow carried all, or at the very least _most_ of those things over from a life that had ended, into a new body.

Well, I guess there was always a bright side, right? I didn’t reincarnate as _Draco Malfoy_. Or, _shudder_ , Crabbe or Goyle.

(But still, Death, why did you have to shove me into the body of a girl? I’d already dealt with momentary gender confusion in my past life. And that was _without_ reincarnating as someone of the opposite sex. The hell!? And I most _certainly_ wanted _nothing_ to do with puberty again—especially not that of the _feminine variety_!)

I immediately began committing everything I could recall about the Harry Potter series to memory.

The bad part of accepting my situation was… Well, I still couldn’t do anything because of my status as a baby. And _God_ , these days spent in a crib with six curious older brothers poking and prodding you were boring as _hell_. Four weeks in, going on five, I achieved my first spurt of magic out of sheer _frustration_ with the situation I’d been forced into. I _hated_ having to wear diapers, I _hated_ the feeling of my own crap sitting there, stewing, while my parents did (a) Ministry things on Arthur’s part, and (b) Order of the Phoenix things on both of their parts; and most of all, I _hated_ the embarrassment of being breastfed and getting talked to in that cutesy baby voice!

I didn’t want to be a baby! I didn’t want to be Ginny Weasley! I wanted to be _me_!

 _Aggggh!_ Make it stop!

My brothers, the youngest of them attempting to wrestle with me and the others all curious to see how this would pan out, all jumped back from me as my bright orange hair suddenly turned deep, blood red and my eyes went red. A few of them cried out in surprise, and Mother, who’d been handling (I _think_ ) Order communications in the room adjacent to the nursery, swept through with wide, concerned eyes. Then she spotted me and froze.

She held out her wand, pointed at me, and said, “ _Finate Incantatem!_ ”

Nothing happened. My hair and eyes still remained blood red. Well, actually, something else _did_ happen; they turned pink and green respectively. I don’t think that these events were related to her attempted spell, though.

Molly’s eyes shot up. “I don’t believe it,” she breathed, a smile spreading across her face and a laugh bubbling up. “You’re a _Metamorphmagus_ , though those are rare…” She shook her head, grinning. “Ginny, Ginny, I’m sure you’ll grow up to be a very fine young witch!” Then her brows furrowed. “But how can we turn the hair back to normal…?” she mused, the shock melting away. It replaced with an expression that just screamed she did _not_ know what to do with this new information.

My hair and eyes kept changing color throughout the day. My brothers, now over the fear they’d had at the unexpected occurrence, found this _immensely_ curious, and would not stop touching my hair. Charlie rushed to Dad when he came home that evening, and tugged at his leg, laughing, “Dad! Dad! Ginny’s hair is a rainbow!”

“A rainbow…?”

Meanwhile, my confusion had been steadily growing. This… was a new development? I certainly didn’t remember Ginny being a Metamorphmagus _canonically_ ; the only one I could remember was… Tonks, right? What had changed? Was it just because a different… despite everything I’d experienced up to this point, I was hesitant to say _soul_ … a different person inhabited her body? Was it _my_ magic, rather than hers, that had caused this? Or was her magic simply adapting to me?

Also, how the hell did I control this?

This question remained for the next few years. My hair, eyes, even my skin, changed color all the time. There was one embarrassing moment when Molly and Arthur took me out for my third birthday party at the Leaky Cauldron, and my skin turned bright green, like a classic movie alien. (It wasn’t a big party by any means since the Weasleys were so, ah… financially troubled, but they had still wanted to do something special.) Unfortunately, my first encounter with Draco Malfoy and his snide bigotry caused a new embarrassment: it caused me to accidentally Transfigure my ears into cat ears.

We were visiting Diagon Alley to get Bill his wand, and Draco had come across me in the pet shop, the Magical Menagerie, as I gazed in awe at all of the magical pets.

My thoughts, however, were snatched away at Draco’s laughter at some Muggleborn, and that was when my change occurred.

“I didn’t know the Weasels had a cat, too!” he laughed, bending over at the sight of me. “What’s in the water at the Burrow, anyway?”

My new ears twitched in anger, and I growled, trying to hold back from punching the little shit. How _dare_ he treat me and my family like we were animals!

“How fitting for a cat to be in a place like this,” the young boy drawled on. “Have you decided to join the rest of the cats he—”

Before I quite knew it, and before my increasing anger could cause some more accidental magic, Fred, George, and Percy were there standing between Draco and I.

“Do you have a problem, Draco?” Percy said, narrowing his eyes.

Fred (or was it George?) eagerly added on. “Because, you know, the loo is in the back, and that’s where crap belongs.”

“You’re crap, by the way,” George (or was it Fred?) added helpfully.

Draco looked _furious_ , but his Dad wasn’t nearby, and he didn’t have a wand. He was outnumbered, and Percy was already in Hogwarts and wearing his Hogwarts robes. He sent me one last sneer, then ignored Fred and George. “I was just passing by,” Draco wisely drawled to Percy, and swept by, purposefully bumping into me and making me stumble.

“You okay?” George (I think?) asked me quietly.

I nodded, taking a few breaths. My hands clenched and unclenched, as I carefully dealt with my emotions. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks.”

Fred’s (I guess?) eyes flicked up to my cat ears. “Those are new,” he observed.

I sighed, rubbing the back of my head. “Yeah… yeah, I know...” My accent was a weird mix of American and British, something that had confused my parents and brothers immensely at first; especially since it had been _much_ stronger American when I first started re-learning how to talk. They’d since accepted it as another strange quirk of mine. Well, in any case, it was cute enough, but my magic kept acting up, and even a trip to Mungo’s wouldn’t remove them. I supposed it was fitting, considering my love for catgirls in my old life. Catgirl Ginny was a little weird, though.

At five years old, I _finally_ learned how to control my transformations. Or at least, for my Metamorphmagus transformations. I had to search for my magical core and will magic to flow towards the body part I wanted to change, visualize the change, and Hey, Presto! I was _extremely_ grateful that I could once again have normal skin, and Ginny’s original hair and eyes. Though I wished the ears worked on the same principles.

They didn’t. And trust me; I tried. The only results that came from that… Well, let’s just say neon green cat ears do NOT look very nice against orange hair. At least Fred and George got a few laughs out of that. Though I _did_ wish they’d stop pranking me by grabbing the laser pointer Arthur— _Dad—_ had brought home from work one day, shining it in my sight, and laughing as I uncontrollably pounced upon it.

Ten years in, I _finally_ managed to turn my cat ears back into normal human ears, though don’t ask me how. I had _no_ idea and it had happened entirely by accident. It had occurred on September the First, the day my older brother Ron would finally get to go to Hogwarts. All I could think of was how embarrassing it would be to meet Harry Potter and still be stuck with animal ears. I mean, I didn’t crush on him like the Ginny of old did, but it would still be embarrassing!

As I worried over this during the car ride to Platform 9 and Three-Quarters, the seventh one I’d been on so far, I felt a strange shifting atop my head. I blinked, looked at the window, and let out a shout of surprise that had Dad swerving wildly. “Blimey!” I cried out, a smile breaking out on my face. “My ears are back to normal!”

Fred and George looked _crestfallen_. “Aww, guess that means we can’t have you chase that lasher-thing this Christmas,” one of them—I think it was George?—mock-sighed.

“ _Laser_ pointer,” Arthur corrected, distractedly.

“However shall we tease you now?”

The other one—Fred?—grinned. “I know it’s sad, Gin, but don’t cry, we’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat!”

“Yeah, the biggest, most golden one we can find—”

“ _Boys_ ,” Mom warned, smiling beatifically at them, and their mouths snapped shut. Then she looked over her chair to smile softly at me. “Good job, Ginny. I’m very happy for you!”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said sincerely, relief flooding through me. My American accent had all but faded now; it did crop back up when I was emotional, though.

George, who if I was right was the twin closest to me, leaned over Ron, who squawked with great indignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to shove him away. “We’ll send her three,” he whispered at me with a wink. I giggled at that, having no doubt in my mind that they absolutely would, too.

My brothers were silly as hell, but over the years, as I slowly grew into and accepted the fact that I was Ginny now, they had become _mine_. And I wouldn’t give them up for the world. Back in my old world, I’d never had an older brother, I’d only ever had one older sister. I loved my brothers dearly, especially the twins and Percy. This was in no small part due to how they’d helped defend me against Draco when I was three back in the Magical Menagerie. They held a special spot in my heart.

The car rumbled up to the train station, and we all piled out. The four brothers who had been stuffed in the back seat with me grabbed their luggage from the trunk that was _definitely_ too small to logically hold all of the bags; but magic didn’t exactly run on logical lines. Percy also took out Errol’s cage.

I was a bit sad, to be honest; this year would be really boring. I’d be the only one of my siblings at home, since all of my brothers would either be (a) in school, or (b) working. I wouldn’t even have Ron this year. Because of this, as my family pulled the luggage over to the Platform, I was uncharacteristically quiet. I think Ron picked up on it, dense as he could be, because he lifted up a hand to gently stroke along the top of my head. It was an affectionate action my family had started a few years after my ears turned into cat ears. “Hey, it’s okay, Gin,” he murmured, smiling. “I’ll send you loads of owls, okay? And you’ll get to come next year!”

“I know,” I murmured. “It’s just going to be so _dull_ without you.”

Molly, meanwhile, eyed the surrounding station distastefully. “And as expected, King’s Cross is packed with Muggles, of course,” she observed, sighing. “I really do not know why we have to have this in such a crowded area. It’s a miracle we don’t get spotted, I tell you…”

“We know, Molly,” Arthur sighed; she went off about this every year. He smiled at Percy, Fred, George, and Ron. “Do you boys all have your luggage?”

“Got everything, Dad,” Ron confirmed.

“And Errol?”

Percy lifted up Errol’s cage. “He’s right here.”

“Wonderful,” Arthur said, smiling happily.

“And Ron, pop quiz—what’s the name of the train?” Molly asked, fussing over a few curls in his hair and smoothing it down. He batted her hands away, blushing.

“Mum, I’m not _stupid_ … It’s the Hogwarts Express!” he sighed.

She nodded, giving his curls a few more pats and pulling away when she was pleased with the way it stuck down. “And the platform number?”

My youngest brother rolled his eyes. “Nine and Three-Quarters…”

“Alright, good,” she said with a pleased nod. “Alright, Percy, you’re the oldest here, you go first…”

Percy casually pushed his luggage cart through the barrier at a run, vanishing into the stone. Fred and George ruffled my hair before disappearing into the barrier behind him at the same time, teasing Mom for confusing their names even though literally everyone confused the two of them. Before Ron could start, however, a timid voice asked with trepidation—

“U-Um, excuse me…”

Our attention turned to the voice’s owner, and my eyes rose a little. It was, of course, none other than tiny Harry Potter, hair as pitch black as the night. His eyes shone like emeralds, though his scar couldn’t be seen underneath the absolute mess of hair atop his head. He was the spitting image of Daniel Radcliffe, though, which made me wonder if Radcliffe existed in this world. Hedwig sat in a cage on his luggage cart, her feathers the most beautiful snow white I’d ever seen.

Mom’s eyes softened as she took him in. “Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts?” she asked kindly as her eyes flicked over to his owl. “Don’t worry; Ron’s new, too.”

She pointed at my tall and gangly brother, who gave Harry a tiny wave.

“A-Ah, yes,” he confirmed, and—oh, poor Harry, he looked so _nervous._ His eyes kept flitting between us, as though we would start laughing at him, mocking him, or hurting him any second. I pursed my lips; the Dursleys needed to go to jail _yesterday_. “The… the thing is, I d-don’t know h-how to…”

He trailed off, blushing and looking away, and Mom finished for him. “How to get on the platform, dear?” At his slow nod, the Weasley matriarch smiled. “Don’t worry. All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared you'll crash into it—that’s very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous. Go on, go now, before Ron.”

“You won’t run into the wall,” I chimed in, reassuring him with a soft smile. “It’s magical; it keeps out anyone not entering the Platform, but acts as an entryway for those who are.”

Looking very uncertain at this information, Harry said, “Er—okay.”

He pushed his trolley around, took off at a run, and was soon through the barrier.

I gazed off after him, thinking, as Ron ran through.

This year would see Harry, Ron, and Hermione become friends and face off against Voldemort for the first time. I couldn’t do much since I would be stuck at home… But there WAS something I _could_ do, and it involved a certain magical sweet. That, and a spot of luck. With any hope, I could maybe help guide them to the right answer sooner than they’d have arrived at it, and give them time to get Dumbledore’s help. I could potentially save Harry a trip to the infirmary, at the very least.

Goal set, I kissed Mom on the cheek and marched through the barrier after Ron disappeared.


End file.
